


your tide of bad decisions

by thirty2flavors



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humour, Missing Scene, also gortys and vaughn but only a little, episode 3 roadtrip, not especially shippy but not exactly not shippy either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: “Sorry, sorry,” Sasha continued, not sounding sorry at all, “you mean you just had two—two… flesh arms—”“Flesh arms?” Rhys repeated, pulling a face. “That’s a disgusting way to—”“—two regular, human arms, and you just, what? Hacked one off?”





	your tide of bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstofoctober](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstofoctober/gifts).



> My friend @firstofoctober has been indulging me by watching me play this game, and she was really struggling with the pseudo-canon(?) explanation behind Rhys' cybernetics being "chop off your arm for fun and profit". So -- my gift to her! :P

“So… does that have any games on it?” 

Illuminated by the flickering campfire, Sasha’s green eyes twinkled with curiosity as she looked from Rhys’ face, to his arm, and back again.

“Games?” he repeated, eyebrows creeping up his forehead incredulously. “This—” he wiggled his metal fingers “—is top-of-the-line, cutting edge Hyperion cybernetic technology, and you wanna know if it’s got any games on it?”

Okay, so it was a slight exaggeration; a newer model had been released in the last year. But she didn’t know that, and anyway, his point stood.

Or it should have. 

Sasha stared back, unabashed and unmoved.

He sighed. “It… yeah, it does, yeah. Look.” 

He held up his palm, projecting a display for her to see, and Sasha leaned closer, squinting at the grid.

“What game is that?”

“Minesweeper. It’s… not very good.”

That didn’t seem to mean anything to her, but she peered closely anyway. 

“It also does Solitaire,” he added, and the display switched to a spread of cards. 

Sasha reached up, poking at the deck with one finger. 

“It’s not a touch screen,” said Rhys, frowning. “You know that, right? It’s… how could it be a touch screen? Have you ever used a computer, like, in your life?”

“Shut up,” she said, though her tone lacked the venom it once had. She pulled her hand away and he closed the display. “So are there lots of people walking around up there with one of those?”

“No.” This being a slight point of pride, he couldn’t help the way his chin rose a little higher. “Pretty rare, actually.”

“Why?” 

He shrugged. “People are squeamish about having it installed, I think.”

A wrinkle appeared across Sasha’s normally smooth forehead. “What? Why would they be squeamish?”

That, too, made him feel worryingly smug. “Worried about the pain? Scared to commit? Now, I, on the other hand—”

“Hang on,” Sasha interrupted him, the crease in her brow deeper now. “Rhys. What did… what did you have before that?”

“What do you mean?’

“Your arm. Like, was it a different prosthetic, or…”

“Oh.” He blinked. “No. It was just... you know… an arm.”

_“What?”_

She yelped it loud enough, emphatically enough, that he flinched away. Across the fire, Fiona and Athena’s heads whipped in their direction.

“Sorry, sorry,” Sasha continued, not sounding sorry at all, “you mean you just had two—two… flesh arms—”

“ _Flesh_ arms?” Rhys repeated, pulling a face. “That’s a disgusting way to—”

“—two regular, human arms, and you just, what? Hacked one off?” 

“I—”

“You woke up one day, and you were like ‘you know what, Righty, you’re not really pulling your weight, I think I’ll get you chopped off so that the evil murder company I work for can install something directly into my body’?”

There was a second of silence as Rhys registered the three pairs of eyes trained on him. 

“That’s… I mean, that’s…” He floundered. “Okay, technically, that’s the correct sequence of events—”

“Wow,” chimed Fiona with a low whistle. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“—but it is _not_ an accurate representation of my thought process, thank you very much.” 

“Right.” Fiona had one eyebrow raised, and a dangerous smirk on her lips. “So what _was_ that thought process, exactly?”

Rhys scowled at her defiantly. “I… thought it would help me do my job.”

Fiona gave a short bark of laughter.

“You’re pathological,” said Sasha. 

He glared at her, too. “It was a career move, okay? And it worked.” 

“Define ‘worked’,” said Fiona. “‘Cause, right now, you’re sitting in the dirt. On Pandora. Fancy arm and all.”

Rhys opened his mouth in order to illustrate for her all the ways she was personally responsible for his recent career failure, but Athena spoke first.

“It’s not that weird,” she said.

“Yes! Right! _Thank you_ , Athena!”

Athena was unfazed both by his praise and the sisters’ stares. She shrugged.

“I know people who’ve done way stupider things to their bodies for cash,” she explained.

“Well…” Rhys rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, it wasn’t… they didn’t pay me to do this, I paid to have it done.”

“Oh.” Athena blinked. “Never mind. That’s weird, then.”

Fiona smirked triumphantly. “And how much did that cost?”

Rhys hesitated; he doubted the truth would be well-received.

“Well, it was the best model they had, so…”

Fiona considered it. “So what you’re saying is if we’re really in a bind, we could sell your arm.”

He knew she was kidding—well, she was probably kidding—surely she was kidding—but he crossed his arms protectively just in case. “No, no, no, that is not what I am saying. At all.” 

Fiona grinned like a cat with a mouse.

“I like your arm, Rhys!” declared a cheery modulated voice; Gortys zoomed over from where she’d been sitting, conserving power, with Loader Bot. “It’s like we’re related!”

Rhys smiled at her. “Thanks, Gortys. Gimme five.”

“Okay!” Gortys considered his outstretched hand carefully before she pressed three fingers of one hand and two fingers of the other to the centre of his metal palm. Then she whizzed away back to Loader Bot.

Rhys pointed at the empty space where Gortys had been and looked at the others. “Come on. That was adorable.”

But Sasha was shaking her head.

“I can’t believe you _paid_ to have _Hyperion_ put something _in your brain_ ,” she said, with an expression of mingled disgust and pity. “All the money in the universe wouldn’t make me agree to that. What the hell is wrong with you?” Her eyes widened, suddenly suspicious and paranoid. “What if they can, like, control you remotely? Turn you into a—a slave drone or—”

“Okay, they can’t do that, and that is not how it works.” He wrinkled his nose. “Seriously, you need to take, like, a class or something.” 

Sasha huffed wordlessly. He suspected she didn’t fully believe him.

He rolled his eyes. 

“All right, well, look, I really appreciate all your incredible support for this irreversible decision I made. Super helpful and productive feedback for me to be receiving now, years later. So, that’s great. Thank you, everyone.”

“Any time,” said Fiona.

“But might I remind you,” Rhys carried on, pointedly gesturing with his right arm, “that it has _actually_ been super useful to us, so, you know, you’re welcome.” 

Sasha had the decency to look somewhat mollified, and Athena was as impassive as ever, but Fiona made a noise of doubt, tilting her head like she was deep in thought.

“Mmm, that’s debatable,” she said. “If that EMP hadn’t set you off, Sasha and I would be ten million dollars richer right now.”

“Yeah, and Vaughn and I would be _dead_ because we’d have brought a fake Vault Key back to Helios,” he shot back.

Fiona shrugged. “Not my fault.”

“Not your— _not your fault_? How is that not your fault? That is directly your fault!”

Sensing a fight, Sasha intervened. “Hey, speaking of Vaughn, where was he when you were getting all this done? I’m surprised he let you go through with it.”

“Okay, for starters, I didn’t need Vaughn’s _permission_ —”

The women looked at each other.

“—and secondly, he was totally on board. We planned the whole thing.” He called over his shoulder to where Vaughn sat frozen, propped against the caravan. “Right, bro?”

Across the way, Vaughn grunted incoherently.

Fiona looked over at Vaughn, then shook her head. “Huh. That’s disappointing. I thought he was the smart one.” 

“Hey!”

“Maybe that was a grunt of remorse,” suggested Sasha helpfully.

“Yeah,” said Fiona to the others, an answer to an unasked question, “you know, I think that settles it.” She looked back at him. “Rhys, you’re not allowed to make decisions anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s right,” said Sasha. “Your judgment is impaired.”

Rhys glared at her. “Oh, come on.”

“Your choices are questionable,” agreed Athena.

“Can’t be trusted,” insisted Fiona. “Nor Vaughn, apparently.” 

“Mmhmm,” Sasha hummed. She was grinning now, her face shining with mirth in the firelight. “Good thing we’re around to look after you from now on.” 

In the split second it took her to realize what she’d said, Rhys raised his eyebrows, and then her smile fell, replaced by a closed-off expression that bordered on embarrassment. 

“Until we find this Vault, I mean,” she said hastily, looking away to the fire. “Then you’re on your own with your poor choices.”

It might have been his imagination—or maybe it was a trick of the light, the strange combination of campfire and Pandoran dusk—but he thought her cheeks looked redder than normal. 

“...Right,” said Rhys. 

Sasha resolutely avoided his eye, but Rhys watched her for another moment, until the weight of Fiona’s stare forced his attention away. Fiona changed the subject—something about food, or fuel, or both—but Rhys tuned her out, leaning back on his elbows and staring up at the sky. 

Even from this distance, Helios looked stark and cold. As long as he'd lived there, and as sorely missed as its various creature comforts were, no part of the station had ever really felt like home—it was unwelcoming by design, every inch intimidating. At least Pandora was a deathtrap by accident.

He turned away, gazing around the fire instead: at Gortys and Loader Bot, huddled up as if they had body heat to share; at Fiona, trying to win a smile out of Athena by telling a highly improbable and undoubtedly untrue tale of daring; at Vaughn, who’d followed him from college to Hyperion to Pandora and would probably go just about anywhere Rhys lead; at Sasha, who glimpsed him from the corner of her eye before feigning interest in the drawstrings of her sweater.

Rhys stretched out, hands behind his head as he laid on the ground, watching Elpis with a small smile. 

They could say whatever they wanted. In this particular moment, he was surprisingly satisfied with his choices.


End file.
